Connor McGuigan

After years of midnight announcements online, the Brown Concert Agency is taking a different approach to releasing the lineup for Spring Weekend 2014–one that will draw attention to Brown student musicians.

BCA has pegged six student groups to play a Lineup Release Party this Tuesday at Whiskey Republic. At midnight, they will put a pause to the festivities to announce the lineup for Spring Weekend.

You could just wait for the Facebook flurry (and Blog coverage) from those who trek down the hill on Tuesday night, but here are six things you’d be missing out on:

Clyde Lawrence Band

Clyde Lawrence is a junior hailing from New York City. His infectious soul-infused pop has caught the attention of many Brown students, Providence locals and, according to comments on the video above, French people. He plays a lot of shows at Brown and in the Providence area, and they’re always a good time. Continue Reading

Brown Lecture Board has invited Bill Nye to speak at Brown on December 5th. Just so we can ensure the servers will crash (just kidding BLB), we thought we’d remind you that tickets will become available tomorrow, November 19 at 12 p.m.

To those of you who remember sitting in long lines waiting for tickets in Kasper Multipurpose Room, you’ll be happy to know that you can get your tickets online this time around. Go to this website then to ensure that you—and only you, since it’s one ticket per person—will have a chance to see the Science Guy in the flesh. And there’s hope if you don’t nab a ticket tomorrow. It seems there will be three separate sales: one tomorrow at noon, and then two more at the same time on Wednesday and Thursday.

You don’t need Blog to convince you to spend a couple minutes on a website to get the chance to see this man grace the Salomon stage. He is arguably the most recognizable living scientist in America, a country that rarely grants its researchers celebrity status. And more than any other generation, we grew up on him. “Bill Nye the Science Guy” ran on PBS between 1993 and 1998 and was played in our grade school science classrooms for years after. Without Bill, we never would have known exactly how much science rules.

New York Police Department commissioner Ray Kelly will be delivering the annual Noah Krieger ’93 Memorial Lecture today at 4 p.m. in List 120. The event is sponsored by the Taubman Center for Public Policy.

Kelly’s lecture is entitled “Proactive Policing in America’s Biggest City.” According to the Taubman Center, it will cover policing on 9/11 and the policies he has implemented throughout his 11-year tenure. The Center’s event description states that the NYPD’s strategies under Kelly “have enabled the New York City Police Department to drive crime down by more than 30% since 2001.”

However, Kelly’s invitation to speak at Brown has sparked controversy on campus. A group of students has vocally pushed back against the lecture and the manner in which the Taubman Center framed it. A few days ago, a petition in protest of his appearance began circulating. Its authors’ opinion is that Ray Kelly’s policies, which the Taubman center alluded to positively in their event description, are in fact “harmful and unconstitutional.” The petition demands that the “lecture be cancelled.”

It seems that the lecture will go on as planned today. Last night, protesters held a “Racial Profiling Vigil” on the Faunce steps. This afternoon, they will protest the event itself with a rally outside List Art Center. We’ll be live-tweeting the lecture this afternoon (follow us on Twitter @BlogDailyHerald). This is shaping up to be quite the interesting week…

This afternoon, President Obama nominated Janet Yellen to be the next chairperson of the Federal Reserve. Indeed, you probably already heard–this is big news in its own right. Yellen (if her nomination is approved) would be the first Fed chairwoman, and her appointment marks the end of Ben Bernanke’s eight-year tenure. What you probably haven’t heard is that Yellen is a member of the Brown University class of 1967.

The nature of our school could probably point you towards a few of her political beliefs–she’s a Democrat, and thus a proponent of a strong Fed stimulus program. After leaving Brown with a degree in economics, she headed to Yale to get her Ph.D. in–you’ll never guess–economics. Her extremely successful career in education and government reached new heights when President Obama nominated her as Vice Chairwoman of the Fed.

This Wednesday, the big promotion finally came. Brown should be proud to have such an accomplished, intelligent woman in our ranks. Here’s to hoping her appointment goes smoothly. Once she’s in office, she’ll need all the luck she can get.

As impending finals threaten to suck the humor and happiness out of our daily lives, the Brown comedy community is working hard to get in a few last laughs. Starla, Improvidence, Out of Bounds, and Brown Stand Up put on well-attended shows last weekend. The Brown Noser released its final issue of the semester this week. Tonight, the trend continues with a first-of-its kind event-a live show from Brown Barrel Radio.

The Brown Barrel is an umbrella organization that includes most of Brown University’s comedy groups. Every two weeks, members offer up a podcast of off-the-cuff comedy in their Radio Show. The episodes are packed with sketches, routines and–most importantly–jingles. Tonight, the Barrel Radio Show will be bringing their typically recorded antics to a live audience. They’ve never raised the stakes like this. Will we be introduced to a new jingle? Will there be live renditions of said jingle? Come to Wilson 102 at 7 p.m. tonight to see for yourself. And while you’re on the comedy grind, check out Improvidence and OoB’s 2nd Annual Freaky Friday show at 9:30.

It’s an almost universally agreed upon fact that Facebook changes suck. We like our social networks reliable and unmodified, gosh darnit! So when the cover photo was introduced, we were naturally all a bit hesitant. Two profile pictures? We initially thought to ourselves. What is this hootenanny?

But Facebook users are narcissistic embraced the cover photo and utilized it as a form of expression, posting awkwardly-sized, rectangular images of everything from their favorite place to their favorite artist. After some thorough Facebook stalking research, we deduced what each type of cover photo says about you:

The Beyonce: We feel your pain. Other Beyonce fans are tough to find; you’ve got to broadcast your obsession in the off chance you’ll get a couple of likes from some fellow Bey enthusiasts hiding out there somewhere. But seriously, this ubiquitous choice isn’t all that bad. You’ve got good taste in music… and humans. Sadly, you don’t win any creativity points.

The nature scene: “This website is pretty nice I guess,” Zuckerberg worried to himself the night he conceived the cover photo, “but it needs more sweet pics of people standing in front of mountains.” The nature cover photo became an instant staple. Today, you can’t stalk for long without coming across a picture of dirty people standing in front of a lake. For the most part, these send the right kinds of messages. You’ve got an adventurous side, you’ve seen some incredible sights and you know how to take a decent picture. Unless you pulled it off of Google. That’s not okay. Continue Reading

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